


The Good Ones

by jazzfic



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 15:12:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzfic/pseuds/jazzfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After seven hundred years, and about as many odd creatures born of his strange and mortal kind, there's not much she hasn't heard before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Good Ones

**Author's Note:**

> From the 2010 Paradox-o-Rama AU Race.

When she drinks, she drinks with reckless spirit. Satisfaction within the first taste, so quickly that the rest seems superfluous, almost unnecessary, but she continues anyway. This one was doomed from the start.

It's all so...domestic. When she makes the decision, he's in the laundry room, oblivious to her, folding and unfolding his board. His face is serene, lost in thought.

In a way, he's almost too good to spoil. She must be getting old; the sentimentality makes her stomach crawl.

"I don't understand," he croaks, when she ducks beneath his arm, grabs hold of his neck. His hand hovers in the air, to an invisible point from which he obviously thinks help will magically appear. So she stops his words with her lips.

Behind them there is a thud as the washer changes cycle. As he moves beneath her, her senses mix; she can taste the water, she can see his astonishment. She can _feel_ him ask, _Penny?_ But without it being a question, because after a second, he knows.

"Then don't try," she murmurs. It's something she gave into herself, a long, long time ago.

~

He makes a terrible vampire. He is forever wanting to clean.

"Look at this mess," he says, and tuts. "I mean, really, Penny. Did you think throwing around a few cushions will hide a stain _that_ big?"

She can only shrug. After seven hundred years, and about as many odd creatures born of his strange and mortal kind, there's not much she hasn't heard before.

~

Impatience has never been her virtue.

He's quick to pick up the rules; in fact it almost seems as of he can't get _enough_ of the rules. Blood, death, fate, night, sleep, skin, sun, no sun, trips down dark alleys and meetings in dark places. All of it, he laps up like a hound.

Except for one.

"Sheldon. I hate to break this to you, but we have to have sex."

When she says it, five steps from the third floor, he stops. He spends twelve seconds staring at the brick wall, just past her shoulder. His neck when he swallows makes her think of time falling, the birth of a lie, and something delicious crawls through her as she waits, watching him.

At thirteen seconds his eyes meet hers. And for all her effort, this great speech for the cause, she gets one eyebrow raised and no reply.

Her chest tightens. He knows, god damn him. _Homo novus_ , whoever thought that up needs a brain swap; he's still a man under that wisdom; the arrogant, beautiful, crazy, son of a...

God _damn_ him.

~

Finally, hours later, he says, "Okay, explain."

But he's doing this the wrong way. He asks it right _there_ , eyes drilled with sphinx-like focus all the way into Penny's, asks it when they're getting ready to play Halo, and everyone's busy untangling cords and there's leftover Thai food still on the table. When they're all listening.

"Explain what?" asks Howard.

But he's distracted, like the others, and doesn't notice how they stare at one another. Sheldon's mouth is a thin, straight line, and in his stare is a challenge. God save her (ha! too late); he's like a brick wall.

So she tries various approaches. She tries cute (he glances briefly at her curls and Hello Kitty! shorts, and goes right back to talking about particles). She tries bored indifference (more particles; with a bonus lecture on chrysalids when she pretends to fall asleep). She tries flat out wheedling (he just gazes blankly at her over her laundry basket, dabs some stain remover on a particularly bloodied shirt, and leaves her to the rumbling machines). She even resorts to appealing to his intellectual side (not so much a side as a goddamn whole), but that works about as well as trying to stop him from the endless cleaning.

One evening, she feigns an injury. He's still a classic hypochondriac, after all. She asks him to check her back; she thinks something bit her (no, the irony is not at all lost), so she strips off her top, makes him look. She conjures up a sheen of sweat, has it glisten on her skin. But all he does is bend down, fingertips hovering, and says no, he sees nothing. Careful Penny, you might catch cold.

And then he gets up and makes two cups of tea.

~

Choosing the good ones has always been _her_ rule, but she might have just sunk into the only one she can't break.

But she's not giving up yet.

In the very late hours, they escape to the dark outside. When he's lost, it's hard holding him back. But the great problem is that watching him drink turns her on; it makes her blood boil. She hasn't approached him since their first encounter, before he was changed (in her dreams which aren't, she wonders, sometimes, what it's like—normality—but her curiosity is staggered, it fades with the taste), and the urge to repeat it is a buzzing hive inside her, so strong she believes she might kill with mere touch.

Like now.

When he stops, looks around, and when she realises it's plain that he's not had enough, she's there. Because he's forgotten one very important thing: arguments in the day lose all their strength at night.

"I don't understand," Sheldon says, an echo from before. But this time it's different; this time he does; she can tell by the way he's looking at her. She doesn't give him a chance to go back. Penny steps forward, and before he can move her lips are on his jaw and her hands are pressed to his chest.

This time the senses stay put, and the blood she feels running stays beneath his skin.

~

He makes a wonderful vampire. No, he hasn't lost the need to clean at every opportunity, but now that he's discovered sex, it's not so...pressing.

So to speak.

"Sheldon," she says, or tries to say. It's hard when there's a hand on her thigh and the soft crown of his head beneath her palm. She rocks back against the wall, sucks in air through her teeth as waves of something inexplicable, of utter abandon, spread through her lower body. Her fingertips dig into his scalp. "Sheldon..."

He rises, kisses her once. She bites his lip and pulls him closer, because once is never enough.

~

Fourteen hundred and thirty one years. That's how long they last. Then the common cold mutates, and becomes the cure for all things.

Which is good for humanity. It's even all round good for the lizards. But it kills the vampires outright.

In a way, it's almost sad. They were really only just getting started.


End file.
